2006 Jefferson Award Medalists

The following information appeared in the Times Union on April 5, 2006.

Inneke Carmola
Amsterdam

Carmola, a high school senior, has contributed a great deal to her school and community. She is a member of GIVE, the Scotia-Glenville district's service-learning program. As a member of the Buddies program, she has volunteered to help BOCES students with disabilities. As a freshman, she started the Adaptive Sports service-learning program, whose student volunteers help young people with disabilities play soccer and basketball.

Fred Gilmore
Albany

Gilmore, pastor of Upon This Rock Tabernacle Church in Albany, is a familiar face in hospitals, shelters and jails, where he helps young people. He sponsored fund drives for victims of hurricanes long before Katrina hit. He arranged for donations to provide a roof for a church in Jamaica, food for the homeless in Haiti, a "clothes closet" for local people in need and free breakfast every Sunday and monthly dinner for students at Hudson Valley Community College.

Charles Muller
Rensselaer

In 1994, Pastor Muller learned that many children on summer vacation would not get meals through school programs. Working out of Victory Christian Church on Quail Street in Albany, he began a mobile feeding program with five volunteers. They delivered 300 lunches a day. The program has enlisted more than 100 paid and volunteer staff who served more than 1,200 meals a day last summer. Over the past year, more than 70,000 meals were served at 17 locations.

Gina Peca
Ballston Lake

Peca has worked for six years to improve the lives of children with cancer. She and her husband, Larry Hoch, know of the disease from personal experience. It claimed the life of their daughter, Catie, in 2000. The Catie Hoch Foundation has raised tens of thousands of dollars to buy medical equipment used in the search for a cure to cancer and for temporary housing of families of cancer patients.

Paul Richter
Albany

Richter has been active with people who have spinal cord injuries, heading the local chapter of the Spinal Cord Society and getting a state law passed to fund research. In spite of limited mobility from his own spinal cord injury, he visits people who are hurt and helps them deal with their lack of function. He also is a volunteer for Meals on Wheels.

Since becoming a U.S. citizen more than 35 years ago, Schroeter has been involved with numerous community organizations. She organized a Balancing Justice Study Circle, which led to the establishment of a county drug court. Schroeter was Schenectady County human rights commissioner, and serves on the county Ethics Committee. She is past president of the Schenectady Interfaith Committee, a delegate to Schenectady Inner City Ministry and past president of Girls Inc.